


The Chamber of Secrets

by audreyslove



Series: Blackened Souls [6]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:42:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25717483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreyslove/pseuds/audreyslove
Summary: written for OQ prompt party, special prompt Blackened Souls -Regina and Robin break into the Chamber of Secrets (and maybe makeout for a bit)It's a different Chamber of Secrets, i took some liberties here but hopefully it's okay!
Relationships: Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Robin Hood, Robin - Relationship
Series: Blackened Souls [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/972618
Comments: 9
Kudos: 22





	The Chamber of Secrets

_“This school is full of secrets and power, within these walls is everything you need to fight evil, one hundred times over”_

Those were the last messages Dumbledore had given them. They can’t ask for anymore, he’s gone now, labeled a trailer and sent off to Azkaban for a crime Regina is sure he was framed for, because Dumbledore would never hurt, let alone kill, a child.

But now they are alone, the new headmaster completely inept, and Cora is still coming for them and if things keep going the way they have, there will be nothing to defend themselves from except the apprentice-level magic they know, their combined powers and hearts as students, and whatever treasures Hogwarts holds.

They are up late, sneaking around the castle as always, checking every odd notch or glimmer of magic, looking for something they can use.

They’ve taken to sleeping together these days.

Just sleep. The room Robin found for them, that old dirty makeout room that has probably a century’s worth of magical STDs haunting around it, that’s been her home lately.

It’s just that… there was a breach in Ravenclaw’s chambers (a freak accident, a house elf got lost, he wasn’t plotting anything, and of course it doesn’t matter that it was Blue’s house elf, that shady fairy that has it in for Regina. And he was just carrying poisonous powder that he found to try to get someone to properly dispose of it all, that’s all) and Regina is loath to put any of her housemates in that danger again, they can’t be collateral damage in her mother’s quest for vengeance.

So she stays away, claimed she wanted to sleep alone, but Robin really can’t stay away it seems, he’s so _connected_ to her, and the nightmares are back and they are awful and he helps, he does.

So they sleep together, sometimes one sleeps and the other takes watch, sometimes they talk, a few times they kiss, one his hand wandered up her shirt in a desperate time, his body rocked into hers, when she needed his touch and his affection to distract her from the impending doom that had overwhelmed him.

But Regina doesn’t indulge that much in those desires. She won’t be around for long (her life won’t end by her own hand, but she’s so certain it will end, that she will need to take responsibility and throw her body in front of another to protect a true innocent, and there’s no sense having something that makes her life feel worth living, it will only make giving it up harder).

Tonight it’s late, and Regina had spotted a flicker of something underneath the stairwells of Slytherin, so here they are, using Robins invisibility cloak (they are so close, tightly wrapped around each other under a blanket, fuck it’s unfair to feel these things).

And on the fifth spell, something snaps, and she hears the words around her.

_“What is it you seek?”_

She turns to Robin, who just looks confused, and it takes her a moment to realize the voice is speaking parseltongue and Robin can’t understand it.

“It asks us what we seek,” Regina whispers to him.

“It has to be a riddle,” Robin mutters, but before they can think of an answer, she hears a hissed _Too late!_ and then feels herself being pulled into and through the walls, the warped strange feeling overwhelming her as they fall into a darkened chamber.

“You have tried to trespass? You seek to stop me?”

She can’t see anything in the darkened room, but whispers are all around her, words of classmates and teachers she can recognize, all hushed and whispered and on top of each other. yells out “Lumos” and wishes that she hadn’t.

Nearly the whole room is home to a large, gigantic… Basilisk, it seems.

“Robin, look away!” she orders, shielding her own eyes as the room moves, god it’s all around them, and she won’t die, she won’t.

“So tasty,” the great sergeant hums, “So many treats you’ve brought me, didn’t you? You’re full of power. And feasting on you will be just delicious.”

Regina doesn’t need to see, she can sense this creature in a way she can’t describe, she just knows exactly where its eyes and face are, and she blindly points her wand in that direction and thinks of saving Robin, saying the only truly strong curse she can literally do with her eyes closed.

“Petrificus Totalus!” she screams, and then she hears a thumb, breathes heavily against Robin, hugs him tightly and let’s her wands light go out as they hold each other in the dark, surrounded by the temporarily paralyzed monster that will kill them.

For a moment she can’t think, can’t get over anything but the fear, and all she can do is hold Robin while she can and try to brace herself for the end, not just of her life but of the life of a truly good and wonderful person.

“Regina,” Robin whispers in her ear, “love, you stopped it, it’s okay, we’re just fine.”

She hadn’t realized she’s been sobbing til that moment, when she tries to speak and a choked sob comes out. “Robin, n-no, I didn’t stop it. I just… it’s paralyzed. I d-don’t know h-how long—“

“It’s okay,” he soothes, trying to break her hold on him (she’s pressing his face into her shoulder to shield him, and it’s… oh god.)

“No!” she presses him back into her, “No, Robin, you can’t look, it’s eyes may be open, probably _are_ open, it could be anywhere, it could be looking right at you the second you open your eyes, and even paralyzed then we are, it’s…”

“Okay,” Robin says soothingly. “How can we destroy its eyes without seeing them first?

“I don’t know,” she sobs, but she still has this image, sees it’s head in her mind, those eyes, behind her and to the right.

“Will _obscuro_ work on the basilisk?” Robin asks, but Regina shakes her head. “No, Robin, it might blind it from seeing us but we would still see _it,_ and that kills us.”

“Then we blind each other,” Robin suggests. “Temporarily, just to figure this out.”

Regina breaths and tugs him tighter to him.

“Okay,” she breaths.

The spells go well, all she can see is dark, and she breathes in relief.

“We don’t have long,” she tells him, “the spell could wear off any second, I can’t… we don’t have time, we—“

“Shh, don’t spiral,” Robin begs. “Let’s just search around the room, feel for its head, and then, darling, I have a knife, we can cut out the eyes and hack them to bits. And then cut its head clean off.”

Regina tells herself there’s no use for her panic attack now, that will have to wait til Robin is safe.

“I feel like…”

She lets that clear picture in her head lead her, let’s her wander through darkness to where she feels it’s presence, then feels in the dark.

It’s not long til her hand feels something slippery, wet, and round as she follows the edges she feels the scaly skin around it.

How did she know where it was?

“I found it,” she says softly.

“Already?” Robin asks, surprised. “See darling, luck is on our side. I’m coming to you.”

He trips twice and head in the wrong direction more than once, so it seems luck is anything but on _their_ side.

But this was an unexpected miracle, when he does get to her, he hands her his pocket knife and she starts to stab.

The eye pops and spits, she feels liquid splash her as she slices through one eye and then the other. She gives it everything she can, she stabs for his life, not for hers, because god this thing wants to kill Robin and it _will not_. She doesn’t stop, she stabs every pit of flesh that falls from the serpent, she doesn’t repent, until she’s stabbing into empty sockets, the knife not budging against the thick skin.

“Fuck,” she whispers. “We can’t kill it. It’s skin is… it’s too tough.”

“Can we look now?” Robin asks.

Regina doesn’t answer, just quietly breaks the blindfold curse herself, better she risk it than him.

The eyes are entirely gone. there’s a liquify, bloody mess down the beast’s nose and mouth (god it’s paralyzed not dead, that thing will be _pissed_ when it wakes up).

“We can look now,” she verifies.

Robin lifts his curse and lets out a soft _fuck_ at absolute blood bath before him.

Regina is busy looking for a weakness, a way to kill it.

Every spell, every stab of her knife doesn’t mouthing to hurt the creature.

She becomes more frantic as the minutes increase, until she’s half sobbing and Robin has to hold her and stop her from her frantic, useless attempts.

“Love,” he whispers, “let’s think about what this is, yeah? What are those voices we are hearing?”

Regina tries to listen to something other than the pounding in her heart and the blood rushing in her head.

Right. Whispers. Soft voices on top of the other.

Regina luminary’s her wand and looks around the room again, slower now, more careful.

She sees it then, the large, glass container, nearly floor the ceiling, filled with wispy darts of some sort of fog, singing and buzzing like fireflies stuck inside a mason jar.

There are too many voices to hear just one, but somehow she’s able to hear the word _embarrassing,_ and suddenly she knows what this is.

This is it...

Not such a myth after all.

She looks up at Robin and bites her lip.

“This is the Chamber of Secrets.”

He furrows his brow as if in deep suspicion then looks around. “Shit. I thought that was just a cautionary tale for children who hide truths,” Robin murmurs.

Regina murmurs in agreement.

She tries magic, focuses on the connection between the collection of secrets and the basilisk and nods.

“It feeds off of secrets,” she confirms. “It’s been collecting them for years, maybe centuries. It’s…. impenetrable.”

“Do we…” Robin mutters, “Release them? Cut it off from its power source? Maybe if we hear them, then they won’t be secrets anymore and the power…”

Regina bites her lip.

Releasing them all is dangerous, dumping them out where they could be overheard. She tries to pull a few out. it works but it’s tedious. The secrets she pulls range from problematic to embarrassing. Secret crushes, a boy hiding his shake of being a bedwetter, a dark voice of someone who pulled a prank on a fellow wizard that resulted in permanent disfigurement. Teachers having affairs.Traumatic childhood incidents.

It’s also so personal and so out of context.

After about twenty minutes she grows restless. “Give me the knife,” she demands, sticking her hand out to Tobin.

He gives it to her.

The knife gives no resistance.

“No…” she wails, god it’s terrifying, all that work for nothing.”There has to be a way out of here. There has to, it just…”

There’s no sense hiding it, so she just says it. “I’m terrified, Robin.”

And then she jams the knife uselessly into the basilisks head again, but this time, she draws blood.

It stops just past skin deep, but it gave, it cracked. How?

“It traps secrets,” Robin mutters, looking at the vaporous whispers in the large jar. “And it trapped us.”

Regina looks at him, puzzled.

“You told a secret,” Robin reminds her. “You admitted you were terrified.”

“It’s hardly a secret,” Regina scoffs.

“Maybe those secrets in the jar don’t sustain it. Maybe it’s the secrets it hasn’t feasted on yet that make it so powerful. Or us so weak.” Robin suggests.

Regina looks around the room, looks at the whispers in the jar.

They have a power, she knows they must. No, this isn’t about the secrets between them.

“It doesn’t matter if we know the secrets of strangers. They kept them from certain people, not us. Hand me the knife.”

Regina does. She is so used to leasing in these situations but now… Robin is on to something and she’s going to let him do it.

“I stole your herbology homework one day when you we’re looking and copied it,” Robin admits.

The knife sinks in a bit more. Regina gasps.

Well that’s it, then.

“I snogged Marian last year, before we became… what we became. It meant nothing.”

Another stab. Blood splatters, but it doesn’t inch deep enough.

He looks up at her and shrugs. “You tell a secret now. Something you’ve kept from me,” he asks.

But all the secrets she has kept aren’t cute or harmless like Robin’s.

.”I… I can’t think of anything,” she lies. “We were supposed to tell each other everything.”

Robins brow knots. “The… look at the wound from where I stabbed this thing,” he directs.

She walks over, close, so close, and fuck, it’s _healing_.

“It happened after you said that,” Robin accuses. “Why?”

“The more you conceal a secret the greater its power,” Regina mutters.

“Tell it, Regina please tell the secret. you’re only making it stronger.”

She won’t say everything in her heart, but she can come up with something.

“I had a crush on you when I was a child,” she admits, taking the knife and stabbing the serpent's head. It gives a little. “I had pictures of you on my wall. Mom made me tear them down, but I just figured out a way to make them invisible to her.”

Robin smiles but doesn’t tease her.

“I worry that you’re actually smarter than me, and the only reason you don’t do better in school is because you don’t try.” It’s a dumb secret, but the knife gives a little.

They trade smaller, funnier secrets for a while. It gets a bit racy when Robin admits to thinking about Regina in the shower, confesses to all sorts of inappropriate thoughts. And she confesses the same, which makes them both redfaced and flushed, but if they thought the more embarrassing the secret, the better, well, it’s not exactly true. There is different power in each secret, and Regina finds the ones she feels the need to hide the most are the ones that cause the most damage.

Robin must notice too, because when it’s his turn to take the knife next, he looks up at her apologetically.

“I’m sorry,” he smiles sadly. “I didn’t see the point in every saying this out loud. But now….” he shrugs. “Regina, I love that your patronus is a lioness,” he admits. Oh, he’s not fucking around, they don’t talk about that, he always tells her he’s sorry that it happened, that it doesn’t mean anything, that it’s not big deal. That’s a deep secret, one he tried hard to conceal and the cut on the basilisk is just as deep. “I know it upset you, and I feel guilty, but I wanted to be the one. I wanted you to be connected to me, not to Daniel.”

Another thrust of the knife, a deep cut on the beast, a deeper cut still on her heart. Even knowing Daniel is far from perfect, that he never truly loved her, Robin’s secret scars and hurts, it’s hit something sensitive, she’s so angry at him now, angry and hurt and upset and fuck, so may feeligns at once.

“Give me the knife,” she says, because she could really use to go a-stabbing right now.

He hands it to her, all regret, but also concern.

“It’s deep, Regina. Don’t let it heal.”

Because he knows her, and he knows she has a tendency to say the opposite of what she feels when things get tender like this.

She has to fight it.

“I don’t think I’ll live to graduate,” she admits, taking a deep stab at the sepeant. Nothing much happens, and she frowns.

“You’ve told me that before,” Robin mutters.

She groans. Fine. She can think of something better. “I used to not care about whether I lived or died,” she admits, and oh, that does it. “But then you made me care about you,” another stab, deeper this time, “and you cared about me,” blood spurts, “and now, fuck, Robin, I don’t want to die. I want to live.”

The knife slides in like butter on that stab and it shocks her…

But she feels the beast move beneath her, slightly. Fuck, things are wearing off.

Robin grabs the knife from her, more determined now.

“I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about you,” he admits, stabbing hard. It’s true. “And you don’t want to hear it, so I don’t say it. But I think you know how I feel.”

This time when he hacks at the basilisk, its nostrils flare. It’s waking up and they have a dull knife, once it wakes they won’t be able to kill it with such a small useless object. This is it, they have to go now.

“If we get out of high school alive, I don’t care what I do. I just want to be with you,” Robin says, hacking at the serpent now, harder, faster, “I don’t care what happens for the rest of my life, as long as I have you I don’t need anything else,” the basilisk is a bloody mess, the gash on its head so deep, god, it cannot last much longer. “But I do need you,” he admits, and that is a secret, it seems, a true one, because the knife kicks up more blood, the gash widens. “I want to say the words you don’t want me to, but you know, you already know how I feel, it’s not a secret. But I want to say them anyway,” he admits, the gash widening.

“Give me the knife,” Regina says, feeling welling up inside her, needing some sort of reason to confess a secret right now.

He does, hands it over to her.

And she pauses. Thinks. Thinks of what to say, what secret to share, if there are any anymore.

That hesitation is short-sided, however.

The curse wears off in an instant, the bloody, angry basilisk shrieks, its jaw opens, mouth widens, and Robin is on its neck, Regina right within swallowing distance, and she can’t think of anything right now but Robin and the fact his life is in danger because of her, that he will probably die for her, and fuck, what secrets are even left between them?

The basilisk veers toward her, blind as it is, as if he knows exactly where she is, and his head is wobbly, gash large but not enough to fully it stop it, and as the fangs close in around her,it’s not her life that flashes before her eyes, but Robin’s, his life, his goodness, all that is pure and good and wonderful.

“I’m in love with you,” she shouts to Robin, over the hissing. “I wish I could have said it sooner. I think of saying it all the time, you know. I—”

She smiles sweetly at Robin, the snake’s mouth is right in front over her, milliseconds from biting her and she thinks this may be over for her, but not for Robin. The moment it goes into bite her, Regina darts between the fangs, reaches inside the snake's mouth, her knife up, aiming towards where they’ve already been hacking.

But the knife is dull, so dull, and there’s not enough time to cut through it. Even if she had just revealed a secret (Robin isn’t an idiot, she worries, he knows how she feels, perhaps better than she ever did) and shit, she won’t be able to hack this monster’s head off in time.

She hopes she’s wrong, hopes she kills it before she dies herself.

But this cut, _this_ cut slides into the scaly flesh as if it were warm butter, and the entire beast just _melts_ at the tough, blood spewing, a shrieking sound of agony falling from its mouth as the beast drops, the top of its head completely severed at the slightest of touches.

“Secrets we hide from ourselves are the most powerful,” she hears in parselmouth before the beast goes entirely silent, Robin is maneuvering down over its long, twisted body, trying to free himself and reach her, god, the entire room is gory and bloody and gross, and this is the furthest thing from romantic.

Of course the first time the Girl Who Died says I love you it’s in front of a dying basilisk, covered in blood.

This is her life.

“Thank god you’re alive,” he murmurs. “I would have been so cross with you if you had died before I got to say I love you back.”

She laughs, shakes her head, and wipes the blood from out of her eyes.

Robin waves his wand, murmurs some spell she doesn’t catch, but it’s clearly a cleaning one, because the blood is free from his skin, now, and the wet, sticky, feeling on top of her head is gone too.

“We’re going to get through all of this,” he promises her, his hand on her cheek. “We’re going to graduate, me, by cheating, I assume, you, by being brilliant, but we’re also going to defeat the Dark One, and hell, your mother while we’re at it. And then, when things have calmed down, and you no longer believe you have an early expiration date, I’m going to take you on a proper date. And we’re not going to dance around feelings anymore. We’re not going to be scared of them anymore. That will be our reward, okay? Normal, guilt free, non-anxiety inducing, feelings-filled dating. Okay?”

Regina swallows hard, wets her lips and thinks of what to say, how to argue with him there.

There’s nothing to say. She lets her mind go blank as he swipes his palm over her cheek, closes her eyes and leans into the touch.

“Love…”

The basilisk interrupts them, erupts into a flash of white light (it was enchanted, afterall, a being that lives on secrets it’s exactly alive in the same way others are, is it?). The noise it makes is as loud as thunder and they both jump out of whatever intoxicating moment they were stuck in. The room is nearly empty now, and easier to see without long coils of snake blocking every nook and cranny.

The room looked so ominous before, but now it’s just a rather plain, boring room, minus the jar of secrets.

But in the middle of the wooden floor, on a place once covered by thick layers of snake, Regina spots a trap door.

“I think we found our way out,” Robin laughs, his eyes also focused on the door. He holds her tighter, kisses her forehead. “But oddly, I am not nearly as excited to leave as I once was.”

Regina snickers back. “Yes, it’s not a bad room now that the death threat has been removed,” she hummed.

“It’s a brilliant room. It’s the room where Regina Mills told me she loved me,” Robin reminds her, her cheeks flush red.

“God, Robin, of all the moments—”

“I knew you’d only say it under threat of death,” he teases, and she groans, shakes her head, lets him tease her, her face growing hotter at the reminder of just how embarrassing this was.

“I really do love you,” Robin tells her.

“And you really do have a picture of me in a swimsuit you like to look at,” she teases, because she runs from feelings and watching him get embarrassed is so cute.

“Hey,” Robin says softly, perhaps going for mock offense but sounding far too sweet, “what is shared in the chamber of secrets stays in the chamber of secrets.”

Regina laughs at that. “Does it?” she asks, her arms wrapping around him tighter his running through her hair. They bump noses and smile and tease one another before Regina grows restless of teasing and finally claims his lips.

It’s all love and passion, intimate and close, there’s no rush, it won’t go anywhere, the kisses won’t lead to nudity or orgasms, and she doesn’t even want that right now. She just wants to be held all night, god for all she considers herself damaged and tortured sometimes she just is a stereotypical teenage girl, isn’t she?

They kiss until they are both breathless, until Robin murmurs into her ear, “this feels scandalous amidst all these whispers.”

She laughs, but also starts to wonder about the secrets kept in this chamber.

“We need to do something with them. Let me think,” she pants, but Robin is kissing her neck, her jaw, nipping at her earlobe and doing anything but _letting her think_. “Robin…” she warns, but she doesn’t _really_ want him to stop, so arches into the touch and lets him shower her in affection for a while.

“Some of those secrets may be useful,” she whispers as he kisses down her neck. “I just have to think of a way to, mm…” he gives her a quick, tongue-filled kiss on lips, “sort them.”

“Later,” Robin asks, “let’s just enjoy this for a moment, please.”

He stops kissing her, pulls back enough to be able to look her in the eye and asks, “Let’s just pretend we’re normal for a moment. That we don’t have the weight of… all of that on our shoulders. Just for a few moments.”

It’s not that easy for her, sadly, the weight of everything she is and her mother is always around, and it makes it hard to appreciate the pure elation she should be, to appreciate she has someone who loves her, who risks his life for her, who wants to be with her forever, in ways they are much too young to commit to and yet the feeling is there just the same.

She reminds herself that she’s skirted death once again, and more importantly, so has Robin. That he’s here, he’s warm, his arms are around her and he loves her and it’s okay to enjoy this moment for a bit.

There are powerful secrets in this room, things that could change everything.

But they have waited this long, they can wait a little longer.

For tonight she can be a teenage girl who finds herself in an abandoned room with her not-really-but-almost _very painfully_ attractive boyfriend, that Hogwarts is just a fancy boarding school and not the battlefield that it’s rapidly becoming, that all she has to do is be careful not to get caught by her boarding school teachers and she will be fine.

She tries so hard to pretend, and it almost works, the way she’s wrapped around Robin and he’s caught up in her. For a few minutes, the fear and responsibility lifts and she just melts into hot kisses and warm embraces for the boy she’s not allowed herself to love but does anyway.


End file.
